The purpose of space travel

>>2445187
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/01/18/nasa-planning-mission-asteroid-worth-10000-quadrillion/96709250/

money and resources; asteroids are filled with elements and minerals that we desperately need for our increasingly resource-intensive technological advancements

Furthering our knowledge on life and everything that encompasses it. We will also have to inhabit other planets if we ever hope to survive as a species in the long run.

>>2445200
The material costs needed to mine asteroids far outweigh the potential profits.

That's what the old men said before we explored the seas

>>2445236
for now

>>2445248
Forever. If prices are high enough to make asteroid mining profitable, they're also high enough to make consumption of the extracted resources uneconomical.

Luddite fucks should be rounded up and shot.

>>2445378
Prices don't have to be high though, extraction cost only has to be low. You're in no position to say how low that cost may go in the next 20-30 years.

Also, exploration is human nature. It doesn't have to be useful. The same thing with sports and athletic competition. They're seemingly useless, but incredibly meaningful to the majority of people.

>>2445378
Really pushing the 'let's stay here and make scientists grumpy' agenda.

Dunno, GPS is pretty cool

>>2445378
>Modern technology and capitalism are forever

>>2445187
Because novelty is biologically attractive to humans in nature, and investing in space travel has great potential in leading us to things that we've never been able to experience first-hand before.

The only way to guarantee the survival of humankind is to colonize other worlds. Mass extinction events can be unavoidable: one massive meteor impact, one supervirus plague, one megavolcanic eruption, and all known complex thought could be extinguished. Humans have existed for a relatively short period of time. Dinosaurs dominated the Earth for 825 times longer than our species has existed, and still managed to disappear entirely.

>>2445397
>Prices don't have to be high though, extraction cost only has to be low. You're in no position to say how low that cost may go in the next 20-30 years.
Extraction costs will never not be astronomically higher than the costs of extraction here on earth simply because of the ridiculous amounts of resources you would need. Can it become cheaper than it is today? Of course. But not enough to make it profitable. It's like extracting gold from seawater: technically possible, very tempting on paper, but in practice unfeasible.

We are on a timeclock isnt it that obvious?

>>2445187
>I think leaving the trees is useless, we have nothing to see down there.

Let us just stay stupid tree monkeys.

>>2445187
Humans on earth doing space shuttle is like a frog in the well saying there are no life outside the well.

You idiocy can be excused for being French.

>>2446096
>Humans on earth doing space shuttle
>You idiocy can be excused for being French.
I don't think he's the french one here

>>2446133
He' eat the frog for one.

>>2445501
Link anything that supports your theory. I'll wait.

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>>2445187
If anything, evidence of extraterrestrial life would be a reason NOT to go.

But in the end, we have to... This biosphere's days are inevitably numbered. The best we have is a billion years before we're fried, and maybe three more before the sun swallows us whole. We're very unlikely to last that long even if we do everything right - with everything we know that can go wrong, both terrestrially and cosmologically, the closest thing we have to evidence of divine providence, is the fact that there's only five global extinction events in the archeological record, and not five million.

We are the story of life on Earth's last, best hope for survival - even if we are also among the few who could single handedly destroy it. If whatever extinguishes us also removes all other complex life, the planet simply does not have enough time left within it to develop another species with such potential.

>>2445501
'Herp derp we discovered relativity in the 30s but we will NEVER be able to extract resources from asteroids"

Wow, you really represent the human spirit.

>>2446153
what theory?
>>2446162
>Herp derp we discovered relativity
"Discovering" relativity doesn't require billions upon billions of dollars worth of resources. I'm not saying it's impossible for us to mine asteroids, I'm saying the costs of doing so outweigh the benefits.

>>2445501
>>2446162
Meh, we will get the extraction costs down to reasonable someday, and the staggering amount of materials you can potentially bring back just wrecks any argument against the possibility.

However, asteroid mining is a shit argument for space exploration. The sheer amount materials you could end up bringing back could easily crash any market for them, making them all but worthless. Just look at all the destitute Spanish conquistadors who brought back so much gold from the new world.

We may *have* to do it someday, just to maintain ourselves, but as resources become rarer, the process becomes more expensive.

That said, the eggs are all in one basket, and that's inevitably fatal. The problem is that said eggs aren't particularly forward thinking and rarely care about anything that happens after their generation dies - and this is one of those efforts where the first few generations who start the process will probably not live to see the benefits.

Maybe we'll get a non-fatal wake up call - though it'd have to be a big and widely visible one, as we've already ignored several:
https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1488490973536.webm

>>2445954
Except there is a hospitable ground awaiting for monkeys down there

There is none up there, if it's not for the unreachable exo-planets

>/his/ - History, Humanities, & /b/ for Pseudointellectuals

>>2445954
>>2446096
what's up with your shitty metaphors ? The frog doesn't have a fucking telescope to determine a paradox that would reveal that there is just no one upthere

>Your idiocy can be excused for being French
So yeah sure buddy, your stupid metaphor can be excused for being that fat dead ass burger fantasizing on Mass effect's aliens

>>2446158
One billion years from now, when the Earth becomes uninhabitable, whatever beings exist could be as different from us as we are from our single celled ancestors one billion years ago.

That's assuming we don't replace our biological bodies with artificial ones, which I think is far more likely.

>>2446666
In addition to the millions of other things that could wipe us out before then, most without warning, and all the things we could do to ourselves, it seems very unlikely any of our distant ancestors, however unrecognizable, will be left by then, should we fail to move among the stars sooner, rather than later.

The problem with a chain that stretches towards eternity, is that it only takes one link with a lack of foresight for the whole thing to break apart.

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>>2445187
Its best to have all our options as fully developed as possible. Leaving things unknown when you have the ability to know them is stupid. Why not stop deep sea diving expeditions? Why did anyone explore antarctica? Why did people tavel months to the americas on wooden ships for basic shit like lumbar, tobacco, and crops?
We already know that in the very distant future the sun will implode and destroy this galaxy as we know it. The sooner we branch out and develop space travel the more likely that when that time comes we will have already achieved and settled distant galaxies. The sooner we colonize another planet the likelyhood that humans as a species die out for whatever reason, making us more evolutionarily successful.
If your only reason to not explore space is cost or your short sighted inability to see the purpose then you need to rethink your life. But then again who could expect a frenchman to understand.

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>>2447561
Throw your hands up in the air and explore space like you dont care!

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>>2447567
Space dump

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>>2447576

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>>2447578

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>>2447561
>the sun will implode and destroy this galaxy as we know it.